


you give me everything i never deserved

by oftirnanog



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftirnanog/pseuds/oftirnanog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t know what to do with her,” Ronan growls. His tone does nothing to hide his genuine concern.</p><p>Adam walks over to him. “She’s not something to be done with, Ronan,” he reminds him.</p><p>“I fucking know that, Parrish, but she’s been a fucking disaster lately.”</p><p>---</p><p>Or, that time I really wanted to write teenaged Opal and wanted to know if the fact that she has literal hooves is ever a point of contention. Nine years in the future. Opal wants to go to prom. Ronan doesn't want to let her. Adam smooths things over. Everyone swears a lot and uses 'asshole' as a term of endearment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you give me everything i never deserved

**Author's Note:**

> I needed a fic where Opal gets to be a fully realized person and that also dealt with the fact that she has fucking hooves because just try and tell me that's not a thing they have to deal with. I imagine Ronan would homeschool her until high school and then all hell would break loose. So this is that fic. Minimal angst. Major fluff. Everyone is happy by the end.

Adam steps through the front door and the first thing he hears is a raven shriek, shortly followed by the slamming of a door upstairs. This is further followed by angry punk music blaring from speakers and pounding footsteps on the stairs. Ronan rounds the corner with a furious set to his shoulders.

It’s then that Adam realizes the shriek came from Opal and not Chainsaw. It’s been a while since he’s heard that particular inhuman sound from her. They must’ve had a spectacular fight.

Ronan pauses when he sees Adam, but his expression remains mutinous.

Adam raises his eyebrows.

“I don’t know what to do with her,” Ronan growls. His tone does nothing to hide his genuine concern.

Adam walks over to him. “She’s not something to be done with, Ronan,” he reminds him.

“I fucking know that, Parrish, but she’s been a fucking disaster lately.”

Adam bites down on a smile. Even after nine years Ronan still uses his last name when he’s deflecting from difficult emotions. It’s strangely endearing.

“The fuck are you smiling at? We’re a couple of twenty-seven year-olds raising a fucking teenager. It’s ridiculous.” Ronan runs a hand over the longer curls that fall over his forehead. He still keeps the sides closely buzzed, but after years of Adam suggesting he grow it out, he came to this compromise. Adam thinks Ronan likes the look a lot more than he lets on, otherwise he wouldn’t keep it. “Maybe we shouldn’t have let her go to high school,” Ronan says. “I could have just kept homeschooling her.”

“Ronan,” Adam says, stepping closer to grab his hands. “She’s happy at school.”

“Clearly,” Ronan replies, with as much sarcasm as he can muster, so a considerable amount.

Adam just rolls his eyes. “She was pretty happy at the track meet last week.”

Ronan squints at him. “I thought you said that was cheating.”

Adam laughs. “She has _hooves_ , Ronan. It is cheating.” He shrugs. “But she likes it. It makes her happy. She’s made friends at track.”

Ronan searches Adam’s face as though he’s waiting for judgement, though Adam can’t understand why. He squeezes Ronan’s hands in a way that he hopes is reassuring. Ronan looks down at their joined hands and lets out a long exhale.

“So what was that about, anyway?” Adam asks.

“Some little shit asked her to prom and I told her she couldn’t go.”

“Ronan,” Adam starts, in an effort to reason with him.

“She has _hooves_ , Adam.”

Suddenly Adam understands why Ronan looked as though he might be judged for something, is able to recognize, now, the guilt hidden under his anger. As though any difficulties Opal might face because she has hooves is entirely Ronan’s fault. Because he dreamed her that way.

“Ronan,” he says again, but this time instead of saying it like _be reasonable_ , he says it like _Ronan_ and _I love you_.

He pulls Ronan close and wraps his arms around his shoulders in a hug. Ronan loops his own arms around Adam’s waist and presses his face into Adam’s neck, breathing deeply, making himself a bit shorter to more easily fit in Adam’s embrace.

“I could’ve dreamt her some normal fucking legs,” Ronan mumbles, now that he’s safely hidden against Adam’s skin.

Adam sighs. “I think Opal’s pretty happy just how she is.” He considers this for a moment, then asks, “Did she say something about it?”

Ronan shakes his head. “No. But, I don’t know. She seemed like maybe she wanted to. She said something about wanting to do something normal for once.”

Adam holds Ronan a little tighter. Ronan, who has never known normal, nor ever wanted to. But Adam understands that desire. He also understands that it’s not really what Opal wants. She just wants to fit more comfortably into her own skin, into her idea of who she is and who she wants to be, into her life. Adam also knows that she’ll get there eventually.

“Who is this little shit that asked her prom, anyway?” Adam asks, bringing Ronan back to the foremost issue.

“Some nerd in her English class,” Ronan says, pulling back enough to look at Adam but still stay in the loop of his arms. “Apparently she also speaks a bit of passable Latin.”

“She?” Adam says, grin widening. “It sounds like they might already be kind of dating.”

“Yeah,” Ronan admits. Then, angrily, “I don’t know why she didn’t tell us.”

“Yes, because you’ve taken the news so well,” Adam says drily.

“Asshole.”

They’re silent for a moment. Ronan’s fingers play at the hem of Adam’s t-shirt. Adam can tell he wants to say something, but he lets him work up to it.

“She can’t hide them forever, Adam.”

He wants to point out that she’s done pretty well so far, even managing track and field with long pants and special running shoes dreamt by Ronan. But he knows what Ronan’s getting at.

“She’ll be okay,” Adam assures him. He’s more sure about Opal being okay than he is about most things. She’s a lot like Ronan that way. And Blue, for that matter. Difficult and determined. Impossible stuff.

“What if she isn’t?”

“You worry too much, Lynch,” Adam says. “When did you become such a worrier?”

Ronan snorts. “Fuck. I don’t know. Jesus Mary, am I like Declan?”

Adam laughs. “No. I promise you are not like Declan?”

“You lying to me, Parrish?”

Adam shakes his head. “You just have to trust her, you know?”

“I do.”

“I know. Just keep doing that.”

Ronan sighs. “Fuck.”

“I bet Blue could help her make a great dress.”

Ronan glares at him, but there’s no heat behind it. Adam grins wide enough that his cheeks hurt and he leans in to kiss him. Ronan tugs him in by his ass and Adam chuckles. The Stooges are still blasting upstairs. Adam drops another quick kiss on Ronan’s lips and then steps back.

“I’ll go talk to Opal.”

“Have a nap after. You look like shit.”

Adam smiles and flips him off, inexplicably charmed, as always, by the rough ways Ronan says _I love you_. He heads upstairs and knocks on Opal’s door.

“I said go away!” she shouts.

“It’s Adam,” he says, raising his voice enough to be heard over the loud guitars.

She doesn’t respond, but she does turn the music down and pull the door open. She stomps back over to the bed and flops back on it. She throws a wary glare at Adam and there’s something of her former feral look lurking there. Something of the terrified child that she was when she was first brought into this world.

Adam pauses in the doorway. “Can I come in?”

Opal shrugs, and Adam takes that as the most permission he’s going to get. He comes and sits on the end of the bed, next to where her delicate hooves are resting. She stares Adam down. Her blonde hair fans out on her pillow. She’s added purple and pink streaks to it in the last 24-hours and she’s wearing a bright teal over-sized tunic that would make both Blue and Gansey proud. He wonders briefly if Blue helped her make it. It’s certainly ripped and reworked in enough places to be Blue’s handiwork.

“You look like shit,” she says eventually, and Adam can’t help the laugh that bursts from him, hearing Ronan’s words echoed so closely. Somehow she makes it her own though.

“Long hospital shifts’ll do that to you,” he says with a smile.

“Save any lives today?” Opal asks.

“I’m in radiology. It’s not really the ‘saving lives’ part of medicine.”

“You contribute to the saving of lives,” she insists, frowning at him. That look, too, is very Ronan, and still very much her own.

Adam smiles at her. “Well maybe I did then.”

Opal nods and looks down to pick at a stray thread on her tunic.

“Did Kerah send you?” she asks, voice taking on an accusatory tone.

“No,” Adam assures her. “I just wanted to talk.”

Opal huffs. “He can’t actually stop me from going to prom.”

“He knows that,” Adam says. “He just doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“I know that. So does Ronan.”

“Then why did he fucking freak out?” she demands.

“I think he might’ve been more upset about the fact you didn’t tell us you had a girlfriend.”

Opal rolls her eyes. “She’s not my _girlfriend_.”

“Sounds like she is.”

Opal shrugs. “I don’t know. I like hanging out with her. She’s funny.”

“That’s good.” Adam taps one of her legs. “Mind if I lie down? I really am beat.”

“Only if you promise not to fall asleep,” she says, but she’s already sliding over to make room for him.

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

As soon as Adam is settled in, Opal rests her head on his shoulder.

“Should we ask Blue to help with your prom dress?” he asks.

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to go,” Opal snarks.

“I thought you said we couldn’t stop you,” Adam retorts.

She’s quiet for a moment, and when she speaks again her voice has taken on a different tone. One of carefully constructed nonchalance. Posturing 101 learned from the master himself, Ronan Lynch. “All the other girls will be wearing strappy sandals.”

“Since when are you like all the other girls?” Adam asks, brushing past her faked unconcern. He works his arm under her shoulders, to pull her closer.

“Do you think hooves are too weird for most people?” she asks, voice quiet as she drops the act completely. And that is such a completely un-Ronan thing to do that Adam takes a moment to feel grateful that they’ve managed to create a home for her where she feels safe enough to do that.

Adam hesitates, but Opal already knows the answer, so he goes with the truth. “For some people. Yeah. Probably,” he says. Opal sighs. “But so is your hair,” he tacks on.

Opal giggles and jabs him in the ribs with her elbow. “Asshole.”

Ronan appears in the doorway. “Glad to hear you turned that fucking noise down,” he says.

Opal sticks her tongue out at him because, like Ronan, she is an actual five-year-old.

“You’re just mad she has better taste in music than you,” Adam says. “Get over here, asshole.”

Ronan looks at Opal and she rolls her eyes, budging Adam over even more to make room for Ronan on her other side.

“I need more space than that, brat,” he says, and throws himself gracelessly onto the mattress, sprawling his legs over both of them to prove his point.

“Kerah!” Opal protests, but she’s laughing. “Adam, make him stop!”

“Can’t,” Adam says, letting his eyes fall shut. “I’m sleeping.”

“You promised not to,” Opal says.

“I did no such thing.”

“Don’t fall asleep,” Ronan says. “I have dinner saved for you.”

“Is it lasagna?” Adam asks, cracking one eye open to look at him over Opal. “You promised me lasagna, Lynch.”

“Do you know how fucking long lasagna takes, Parrish?”

“It’s lasagna,” Opal tells him.

There’s a pause. “Yeah, it’s lasagna. I’m a sucker.”

Adam laughs and Opal laughs and then Ronan joins in and they’re a tangled laughing mass on the bed and Adam can’t believe how lucky he got.


End file.
